Why a Dumbfounding Decision in Detroit Puts a Dylan Larkin Trade in Limbo

Steve Yzerman stepping away (or being told to step away) from Detroit’s GM chair didn’t just shake up the front office — it may have frozen the Wings’ biggest pending decision. Yzerman was working on a trade to move Dylan Larkin. All that work, however far along it got, has now been for nothing.

Granted, there didn’t seem to be a lot of noise around an imminent trade. As other players were being moved, the optics of a Larkin trade seemed bleak. He added one team to his trade list (Dallas), but no news had surfaced that anything was close. For example, the Minnesota Wild, who’ve been one of Larkin’s preferred trade destinations all summer, didn’t have anything tabled that moved the needle, and nothing was near the finish line. Still, they now find themselves stuck without a dance partner, according to The Athletic’s Michael Russo and Joe Smith.

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They write, “the shocking news out of Detroit on Wednesday that general manager Steve Yzerman is stepping back into a senior adviser role — and the team is hiring a new head of hockey operations — undoubtedly adds the biggest wrinkle yet to the Wild’s pursuit of Larkin.”

No pun intended, but that Detroit and Minnesota have to throw away anything they’ve worked on is, well,… wild.

Why the Red Wings Chose to Keep Yzerman on Board

The dumbfounding decision isn’t that Yzerman is out. It’s that he’s staying on at all. The fact that trade talks are effectively dead goes to show just how little the Red Wings trust Yzerman to make the right decision. It’s key to remember that he hasn’t actually left the organization. He’s simply serving the team in a different role. In most other situations, he could potentially see the work through he was doing. It’s not like he was moving on, and the team should worry he’d make a bad trade out of spite. He still has to live with whatever deal gets made.

So why keep Yzerman? If the Red Wings don’t trust him to make a good trade, or let him finish what he started, is he little more than someone on a role-reduced legends contract? Does Yzerman have little to no decision-making power? Is he staying on simply to keep up appearances and, for the Red Wings, to avoid firing a Detroit icon?

Now, with a search underway for a new head of hockey operations, trade conversations don’t just stall; they restart from zero. Whoever takes over inherits the biggest decision the franchise has faced in years, and there’s no reason to expect a new executive to rush into a trade before settling in, meeting Larkin, and reassessing Detroit’s direction entirely.

A new GM committed to ending the rebuild might value proven pieces over futures — the exact opposite of what Minnesota’s been offering. A GM leaning toward a longer retool might find the Wild’s offer more appealing than Yzerman did. The same goes for any conversations Yzerman might have been having with Vegas, Florida, or Dallas.

Larkin reportedly still wants to go. But how long will it take in Detroit before that franchise has it’s ducks in a row and can get back to trade conversations?

Next: NHL Trade Talk Recap: Canadiens, Flyers, Oilers & McDavid’s a Target